F-Commerce Growing at Impressive Rate

Many Web professionals are wondering if Facebook commerce is a legitimate and sustainable industry.

According to Payvment (which is, coincidentally, a Facebook commerce platform provider), f-commerce is showing some impressive growth as of late. This data was released in the company's F-Commerce Facts survey that looked at over 100,000 sellers on Facebook, many of which are small businesses with under 500 fans.

The survey says that most of these companies are rapidly adopting and favoring Facebook Ads, and they usually like the service so much that they plan on using it again.

In addition, smaller sellers tend to use a wide variety of outside marketing channels such as Twitter, Google ads and email to drive traffic to their Facebook storefronts. Thirty-eight percent of respondents advertise their Facebook stores on their primary websites, while 34 percent use Twitter, and 30 percent use email marketing campaigns.

Beyond general Facebook marketing, Facebook Ads are by far the top promotional tool for these brands, as 39 percent of the respondents are using or have used the service before. Facebook Ads also show high favorability marks amongst those sellers who have used them.

The survey also showed that most respondents (61 percent) said that the ability to promote their products using social media was the biggest benefit of f-commerce, while 60 percent said they like that customers don't have to leave Facebook to complete a transaction. Brands utilizing f-commerce solutions appear to be convinced of their benefits, and over one-third of the respondents use Facebook as their sole sales channel.

On the more negative side of things, the biggest problem the respondents came up with was their small fanbase.